In the production of wafers such as semiconductor silicon wafers for integral circuits, a protective film is stuck to one side of the wafer for protection. After the other side of the wafer has been polished by a wafer flow or processed otherwise, the protective film has to be peeled off the wafer.
Various processes for peeling the adhesive protective film stuck to the wafer by utilizing the adhesive force of an adhesive tape have been proposed as disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,631,103 and 4,732,642. These conventional processes comprise sticking an adhesive tape for peeling over the whole length of the protective film stuck to the wafer by means of a press roller and then peeling the protective film off the wafer. However, since the press roller presses on the entire length of the wafer, the wafer is apt to be damaged. Besides, the unit for sticking the adhesive tape to the protective film on the wafer and the unit for peeling the adhesive tape together with the protective film stand in a line so that the apparatus for carrying out these processes should be made large-sized.